Theatre: National Theatre

For nearly 50 years Englishmen have been trying to found a National Theatre, while other Englishmen have been trying to prevent them. The British Government have tacitly been part of the Opposition, which argues that a subsidized theatre means bad plays. But a private committee headed by George Bernard Shaw has at last raised $750,000 and spent half of it buying a site in London’s South Kensington, far from the theatre district. Last week, on the eve of Shakespeare’s birthday (April 23), before a crowd of nearly 1,000, including U. S. Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, Mr. Shaw formally accepted the deeds to the site, remarked: “I suppose you have had me here today as the next best thing to Shakespeare. It is said that people do not want a National Theatre. . . . They got the British Museum, Westminster Abbey and the National Gallery that they did not want. But now . . . they like them.” Americans, Shaw continued, should help pay for Britain’s cultural institutions, for “they always visit them, but we never go near them ourselves.”